Does anybody on the ng have, or know where there is, a working HP-8444(A) Tracking Generator that somebody is willing to swap for paper pictures of old dead presidents?
Please don't tell me to try ebay. A lot of somebodys on that site have figured out just exactly how to game the system so that in the last 15 seconds of a listing the bids from somebody who hadn't made a bid in the last seven days magically winds up with the unit for 50 cents more than those of us who have played the game fair for a week.
No, I'm not interested in knowing how to game the system.
Jim
--
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in
a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside,
thoroughly used up, totally worn out, with chocolate in one hand and wine in
the other, loudly proclaiming 'WOO HOO What a Ride!'"
--Unknown
Are you paying your ISP by the character? Then what "hit" and where? $275 is a BIT high, but if mint and guaranteed to work when it gets here not all that bad.
Please, don't be cryptic in your responses.
Jim
-- "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, with chocolate in one hand and wine in the other, loudly proclaiming 'WOO HOO What a Ride!'"
-- "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, with chocolate in one hand and wine in the other, loudly proclaiming 'WOO HOO What a Ride!'"
--Unknown
The problem, Doug, is that there are bids in the last 15 to 30 seconds of an auction (especially for test equipment) from people who have never bid in the previous 7 days. And, in that final flurry of bidding, you will see the same new person bid three, four, or five times. I know that is part of the rules of the auction, but there doesn't seem to be any way to counteract it.
At a normal eyeball auction, the auctioneer generally uses, "going once, going twice, SOLD to the feller with the goofy grin."
Story of my young life. Dime short and a day late. Thanks for anything you can do.
There is no gaming of the system. Highest bid wins whenever it is put in. The only difference in putting a bid in early is that if someone gets emotionally attached to the item they have time to think about it and increase their bid. This is why items that start out with very low bids end up selling at higher prices than those that have high initial bids.
I just bid what I am willing to pay and leave it at that. The unhappy people are those who expect to get something cheap and are disappointed when they don't.
That said, I did have a few 8444A generators around. I will look and see if I still do. I got rid of a truckload of this stuff a few months ago.
Yes there is. There's a game to be played with *every* system. It's just that eBay has a _different_ system to the traditional "auction" where a number of people stand around the auctioneer and bid for an item.
That's a very simplistic rule that applies to everything, in other words, it doesn't actually help us in this eBay instance.
People who fully take advantage of the eBay "system", know that whatever anyone bids before the last five seconds is completely irrelevant. (Or less than the relevant final price anyway).
The only exception I've seen is in the stupid auctions where someone auctions off their virginity, or a party with someone or something equally intangible as that. In that case, the stream of stored bids exceeding $100k (or millions) says something important about the item. The vast majority think it's stupid.
The way to do it, is to keep some sort of accurate timepiece (really accurate), syncronise the clock, and place a bid that is as high as you're willing to go. Press the OK button in the last five seconds.
If you win you win, if you don't you don't. And that's as far as it goes.
The only way you're guaranteed to get something cheaper is to work out if a 'buy it now' plus freight is cheaper than buying it locally off the shelf.
Past that, it's all odds, and if you play the game well, you certainly can average quite a fair bit cheaper and make (some) money. You just have to be flexible on when, how much, and most importantly, _what_ crap you're buying and selling.
So in this instance, I agree with the OP statement. He was after a specific (now obsolete) instrument, and wasn't willing to fudge around with the idiots on eBay to get one. I can't blame him.
IIRC eBay sells software to do what you describe. That way you do not need to lurk at the end of an auction. I don't know what happens if two or more guys do it.
ebay appears to me to have no ethics in this area and others.
I have an HP8444A, serial 1215A00303, that I'd be willing to part with. I'd have to figure out how to adequately test it before sending it anywhere though.
ebay's ethics *are* an issue as it is they who make available for a fee, the software to give some buyers an edge over those who do not buy the software.
As to the lurkers who put in increased maximum bid mounts manually at the end........ That's life.
I have no idea where you live, but if you are in Northern California, I can pack up the 141T spectrum analyzer system and pack it over to your place for testing.
I don't believe that eBay themselves sells any such "snipping" software. However, they do have an API available that programs can use to place listings, make bids, etc... This of course has plenty of legitimate uses but it makes snipping much easier to implement as well.
I'm not sure there's any good technical solution to this problem. Some people have suggested changing the auction format to one similar to those found in real life, where a new bid extends the auction until no more new bids come in, but I certainly understand why people don't like that approach either.
RST Engineering (jw) TOP-POSTED WITH NO ATTRIBUTION:
It's not difficult to figure out:
formatting link
-- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
Far Northern California, up across the Columbia river. There's a good chance that there's an HP141T closer than California. Far easier for me would be to test it parametrically: supply inputs from signal generators and look at the output on a spectrum analyzer. It's not all that complicated inside, at least from a block-diagram perspective, and it should be obvious if any of the modules is not working correctly.
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